In many applications, it is relevant to know the actual location of a business or other entity. For example, map applications often show the presumed geographic location of businesses on a street grid. Such map applications may also provide street-level images, and may superimpose the name of a business on its presumed location in the image. A geographic search application may provide a map showing the location of a business or entity that matches a query.
In order to show the location of a business or other entity on a map or image, an application has to determine the business's location. The location is often inferred from the entity's street address. For example, a particular block of a particular street may have buildings that are numbered one through one hundred. If an entity is at number fifty, it can be inferred that the entity is roughly half the way down the block. Moreover, since fifty is an even number, it is usually possible to infer which side of the street the entity is on. Additionally, some data sources may provide actual latitude and longitude coordinates of an entity.
However, determining an entity's location from street numbers, or even from certain sources of latitude and longitude coordinates, may result in an inaccurate location. The relationship between street numbers and locations along a block might not be linear, since numbers can sometimes “bunch up” toward one end of the street. Some buildings are not placed in a simple line. For example, a street might have a U-shaped courtyard, and several addresses on the street might be located around the courtyard. As to latitude and longitude coordinates, while these may provide the appearance of pinpoint accuracy, the actual coordinate that is reported might not correspond to an entity's actual location on the street. For example, a particular coordinate might refer to the back of a store that extends far back from the street, or might refer to a parking lot that is located on the side of the store.
Thus, when one wants to determine the actual location of an entity, relying on street numbers or even geo-coordinates may provide inaccurate information.